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Elinore - A Diachronic City WIP

This is the beginning of a city project that I harbored for a long time (and will take a long time to be completed, as usual), which I am able to do now that I have a new computer better able to handle large .psd files.
Basically this is a large city, which I am going to draw gradually from its founding up to its fully developed "present" state in my imagined world. There may even be some little story attached to each stage, if I find the time and energy to write it, but the main purpose is that by designing it step by step, thinking about the necessities and the resources available to the people inhabiting and building it, I will be able to achieve a more organic and realistic feeling, which until now has eluded me (or so I feel).
It's going to be a pretty large map, here you can see a 50% size of the basic terrain, where 1px=2m (1px=1m in my working version), so it is 9km*6.5km.
Of course any comment, critique or suggestion would be highly welcomed.

(I was lazy and did not double-check the English. Please forgive any error.

Edit: Corrected (hopefully) text

Elinore
circa 350 years aKf (~year 10 Ec )

The exact time of the founding remains just as uncertain as the identity of the first colonists. Most commonly, the present citizens place the founding of the city in the year 341 after the passage of the Kelerion’s falls, and they claim to come directly from the original lineage of the Elorils, upstream of Kyriakor and even of the Kelerion‘s waterfalls themselves. Others say that cannot be true, since at the claimed date of the founding Kiryakor was a sizeable city, already warring with the Namharim tribes, and therefore Elorils’ migration from upstream must have already ceased by then. This would support the claim that all the Eloril cities in the great Keleryon valley were originally Kiryakor’s colonies (understandibly, not a popular thesis downstream). However, history from such early times is sketchy and fragmented, thus no one can know for sure.
Probably, like most younh colonies, Elinore was originally a rather egalitarian democracy, with some informal prominence recognized to the leader of the expedition.
The “city” at the time was not much to speak of, subsisting on simple agriculture and river fishing; it is nevertheless possible that the original colonists chose the site as they already foresaw the potential of a place where the Akaderyon river met the Kelerion, and the great river was potentially bridgeable thanks to the group of islands.
The few notable features of the original village include the common hall (1), stables (2), and a logging camp (3).

This looks really amazing; I bet it will be fabulous when it's completed!

I really like your trees, and I LOVE the farms... but, I don't know how to say it... The trees look like they are sitting on air above the ground? I think it may be the shadows are too big, but I'm not sure?

Also, I want to help you with your description. You have a few typos/grammar nitpicks there... not a big deal, but if you want to, you might change them

This does sound like a great project, and your progress is very promising so far. One thing I was going to mention is that the islands in your river look a bit wrong. It might be that they look like they've just been dropped there for no reason. In the only examples of riverine islands I know of (Ile de la Citte and Ile Saint-Louis in Paris, and the Tiber Island which you obvously wold be familiar with) the islands occupy most of the width of the river, and alter the way water flows around them. Eg the Tiber is widest where it passes the island (I'm not doing a great job of explaining myself. If there are any geologists reading this, could they please explain it more clearly). I also doubt those islands would appear where a tributary is entering the main river.

Also I thought I'd mention that many English towns (and this probably applies to river ports everywhere) placed their first jetties not on the main river, but on the tributaries of that river. The reason is that the strength of the current was lower in tributaries, and so provided extra protection for boats (especially in a flood).

Hope those thoughts are helpful and don't cause too much problems. As I said, this is a great idea, and I wish you luck with it.

I am not entirely happy with the look of the islands either. One single large island occupying most of the river did not appeal to me, since the river is so wide (~1200m). Are you sure that in any case there is a river island then the river widens? Do you think just widening it a bit would make it look more realistic?
I am not an expert in rivers or geology (or anything), and I don't want to die over details either, but if I can make it more realistic without too much work I'm all for it.

As for the tributary, there will be soon developments in that direction too. I think that such a wide river flowing through a plain should not have an insurmountable current. It better not, indeed, since the river is the main transport route for the region and the center of the entire civilization inhabiting it and its surroundings.

The mississippi river in the US has MANY islands in the river. Here's one off that little bump in illinois;

The largest, Quinsippi island, is about half the size of the river.

It comes right after the tributary from the river out by goose lake meets up with the mississippi.

Right before (almost at) the meeting of those two rivers are 3 smaller islands. None of those is more than 1/5 the width of the mississippi.

People don't see this a *LOT* because most rivers aren't as wide. A narrow river hits a piece of high ground and only has enough pressure to go around it one way. A big ole river like the mississippi will split, because the pressure of all that water hits the high ground and splits...

I dunno how to explain it.

Anyway, what makes an "island" in the middle of a river is simply that the ground there is higher than the water level.

The size of the island compared to the size of the river depends on how big the hill is and how wide your river is.